I guess it got someone's attention in Iran; the UK just discovered he's been hosting Epilogue, a weekly book review show on Iran's Press TV for several months.

Tellingly, the Evening Standard reports that the British public holds a very dim view of Livingstone's association with Iran:

The broadcaster was investigated last year by Ofcom after interviewing a jailed Newsweek journalist who was allegedly under extreme duress at the time in an interrogation room.

Mr Livingstone's appearances, reviewing books on the channel, put him at odds with senior Labour figures including party leader Ed Miliband, who called last month for the release of an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning after her alleged confession to her part in her husband's murder was shown on Press TV.

I was particularly impressed with Toby Young, who really throws the book at Livingstone:

Livingstone’s role on the channel is to present a book programme – ironic, considering the Iranian regime isn’t exactly known for its love of literature. This is the same regime, after all, whose spiritual leader sentenced a British author to death for having the temerity to write a work of fiction he disapproved of.

It's easy to understand why the Jewish community is outraged. Previous programs have included:

After addressing reporter Karl Vick's take on the Shin Bet, a possible oath of allegiance, an investigation into foreign funding of non-governmental organizations, odious calls on Jews to not rent property to Arabs, and other issues, Dermer adds:

Every decision in Israel is put under the microscope by one of world's largest foreign press contingents, the hundreds of human rights organizations and NGOs that operate freely here, a famously adversarial local press and most critically, by a vociferous parliamentary opposition.

The match-ups can be viewed in the table at the bottom of the official Blog-Off page.

Submissions will be pitted against each other; winners who advance -- based on reader votes and a panel-determined score -- will submit new material for another round of voting. The process continues till the final winner is chosen. You can't vote yet, but you can already keep up to date on the submitted blog entries, videos and podcasts (they're all here).

I'd love to enter, but my boss, HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams, is one of the panelists, and we're sponsoring the winner's Apple iPad. I'm still managing to get by without an iPad . . .

The ad includes a link directing you to Riviera Travel, which has some kind of affiliation with the Daily Mail. You don't see the words "Israel" or "Palestine" there either, though there is one reference to "the Holyland."

Strange as it sounds, it's hard to blame the tour company or the paper for not mentioning either side. Britain's Advertising Standards Authority is twisted in knots trying to figure out how to advertise Israel and Palestinian tourism. It's a convoluted situation because:

The ASA's also trying to figure out what to do after receiving complaints about a PA-sponsored ad which never mentions Israel, and states "Palestine lies between the Mediterranean Coast the Jordan River.

Bottom line: the waters are so muddied with doubt, the tourist industry's afraid to mention either Israel or Palestine. Now who do you think benefits more from that?

Tuesday, January 18 2011

LA Times Stringer Peddles Israel Lobby Trash

Over-stretched Western news services rely heavily on arrangements with Palestinian free-lance writers and photographers who know the West Bank: the terrain, the language, the people, the mores. For better or for worse, Big Media coverage of the West Bank would grind to a halt without stringers.

Unlike the U.S. (which has a policy of blind support for Israel for various reasons but mainly due to control by the pro-Israel lobby of the U.S. Congress that as a result ties the hands of the White House), Europe has actually adopted policies toward the Middle East far more advanced than those of the United States . . .

Thus, Palestinians share part of the blame for keeping Europe away because of their mistaken belief that only the U.S. can deliver Israel. But with the U.S. administration’s hands tied because of the strength of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, neither has the U.S. been able to deliver and Palestinians have been left alone in the cold.

2. The US public strongly identifies with Israel because of so many common values: life, liberty, equality, democracy, freedom of speech, accountability, and more. You don't find those values in the Palestinian Authority.

3. To say a group of Jews is capable of controlling Congress and tying the White House's hands to the extent Abukhater describes is, at best, small-minded ignorance, and at worst, anti-Semitic conspiracy-mongering.

CNN looks into PA efforts to rein in the invective and incitement of Palestinian preachers. I credit reporter Kevin Flowers for drawing attention to the problem, but there's a nuance he doesn't make clear enough.

As the Washington Post reported a month ago, the PA crackdown is more about undercutting Hamas influence over West Bank mosques than about messages like Destroy Israel for Allah. Watch and judge for yourself.

Sheikh Hamed Bitawi, one cleric banned from preaching, told Flowers "Myself and the other imams, we incite against the Israeli occupation."

Monday, January 17 2011

Do the photographer and the AFP photo desk believe that living on the wrong side of the Green Line mitigates this ugly attack?

* * *

Once again, Silwan stone throwers and Palestinian photographers ambushed an Israeli car. A lynch like this means paydirt for all the photographers clearly visible in the second image. After all, "if it bleeds, it leads."

Did the photojournalists expect anything else to happen to the next Israeli car to come along?

Jewish settlers driving their car are stoned by masked Palestinian youths as they drive through the Arab east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on 14 January 2011. No injuries were reported. (AFP/Getty Images)

Palestinians throw stones at an Israeli-owned vehicle in the predominantly Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem January 14, 2011. A spokesperson for the Israeli police said that security forces came to the neighbourhood after Palestinian youths threw stones at the vehicle, breaking the windows but causing no injures. (Reuters/Amar Awwad)

• Following Tunisian unrest, Salam Fayyad invited reporters over to reassure international donors the Palestinian street that the PA economy is doing just fine, thank you very much:

The message he wanted to send to 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was that economic conditions were good in spite of reports on the rise in consumer prices and relatively high unemployment and poverty figures.

• The Society of Professional Journalists did the right thing and abolished the lifetime achievement award named after Helen Thomas.

• It was wrong for the Prime Minister's security detail to ask an Al-Jazeera reporter to remove her bra at a press event, and I'm glad Netanyahu's office apologized. But if you're still wondering, What the heck were those guards thinking?Harriet Sherwood sheds more light than I wanted to know:

Apparently the under-wiring messes up their metal detectors.

• A slick video -- sponsored by the Pakistani army -- about Pakistan's war against Islamic insurgents is due to air in Pakistan. A few soldiers will even become celebrities. Can you imagine the world's sneering reaction if the Israeli army sponsored a similar project?

• Russian scientists working in Bushehr fear a "Chernobyl-like" problem as Iran rushes to launch the site. Should I sleep better?

Sadly, Al Akhbar is less maverick and far less heroic than your article suggests. Al Akhbar will no more criticize Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, than Syria’s state-run Tishreen newspaper would question the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.

One of the curiosities I discovered as ambassador to Lebanon was the number of Western journalists, academics and nongovernmental representatives who, while enjoying the fine wines and nightlife of Beirut, romanticized Hezbollah and its associates like Al Akhbar as somehow the authentic voices of the oppressed Lebanese masses.

I wish I could say it’s bizarre that a vastly superior and more professional newspaper such as the New York Times would find anything at all nice to say about a crude rag in a semi-democratic country that actually does have decent newspapers, but this is typical of a scandalously large percentage of Western reporters who parachute into or set up shop in Beirut.

The concept of "non-violence" as opposed to the ISM's justification of a Palestinian "armed struggle:" In its internal documents, on its website and in statements made by its senior figures and activists, the ISM continually stresses that it is in favor of non-violence. The media often call its activists "peace activists." While ISM activists do not directly participate in terrorist attacks against Israel, both in its manuals and in statements its senior figures have justified the Palestinian's armed campaign, even at the height of the Palestinian suicide bombing attacks (during the second intifada). In addition, an analysis of ISM activities on the ground showed that ISM activists sheltered a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative involved in suicide bombing and shooting attacks, and in laying IEDs. They also hindered IDF counterterrorism activities, including the detonation of an explosives laboratory where bombs used in suicide bombing attacks were made.

A poll of Palestinians living in eastern Jerusalem finds that an awful lot of them would like to have Israeli citizenship.

See the detailed results at the Pechter Mideast Polls, as well as Jackson Diehl, who discusses the numbers. An estimated 270,000 Palestinians live in eastern Jerusalem. Here's a vertical rundown:

• "30 percent said they would prefer to be citizens of Palestine in a two-state solution . . ."

• "35 percent said they would choose Israeli citizenship . . ."

• "Forty percent said they would consider moving to another neighborhood in order to become a citizen of Israel rather than Palestine . . ."

• ". . . 54 percent said that if their neighborhood were assigned to Israel, they would not move to Palestine."

Diehl's response:

The reasons for these attitudes are pretty understandable, even healthy. Arabs say they prefer Israel's jobs, schools, health care and welfare benefits to those of a Palestinian state -- and their nationalism is not strong enough for them to set aside these advantages in order to live in an Arab country. The East Jerusalemites don't much love Israel -- they say they suffer from discrimination. But they seem to like what it has to offer.

Somebody notify the meddling EU diplomats who want to step up their own involvement in eastern Jerusalem affairs.

The numbers of those who have applied for Israeli citizenship are still small — only hundreds per year. But in recent years, there has been a steady increase.

Over the past five years, about 3,000 Palestinians applied for Israeli citizenship, and about 2,300 received it, according to the Israeli Interior Ministry. The number of Palestinians granted Israeli citizenship has increased each year during that time, from 147 in 2006 to 690 in 2010.

Some of the damage being caused by the strike is invisible, like in the intelligence department, for example. Disruption of diplomatic mail means sensitive materials are either compromised by regular mail, or just never sent to intelligence personnel abroad.

Investigative journalist Brian Deer exposed a big fraud at The Lancet. It turns out that a 1998 article linking autism to the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine -- already debunked -- was actually based on fraudulent research.

The viral video of Thomas telling Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine," triggered protests to the SPJ, but the West Wing veteran crossed the line in December when she decided to dig in her heels in Detroit, defiantly declaring, "But it was worth it, to speak the truth."

Sunday, January 9 2011

UPDATE Jan. 9, 1:05 pm: Here's an IDF video of the incident. Doesn't look symbolic to me, and Waghorn's description of people throwing stones strikes me as under-stated, to say the least.

* * *

Friday marked the first Bilin fence protest since the day Jawaher Abu Rahma died. Sky News crew was on hand, and Dominic Waghorn's account stinks worse than his film crew, who were doused with The Skunk, one of the IDF's non-lethal forms of crowd control (more on that in a minute).

I don't agree with Waghorn's take on the nature of the protest, or his assessment of the IDF's non-lethal crowd-control measures. These four snippets highlight why:

Snippet 1.

Every week alongwith Israeli and international supporters, villagers symbolically march to the fence to try and reach their land beyond.

Symbolic? These protestors show up to exploit the news services, provoke the army, and -- if the opportunity presents itself -- damage the fence. For that matter, why not suggest that the Israeli crowd control measures are also symbolic?

Snippet 2.

I have interviewed the man who created Skunk, but never seen it used in anger before. He has succeeded in making yeast generate proteins producing a stench smelling somewhere between dead bodies and excrement.

Is Waghorn insinuating that the soldiers using The Skunk are controlled more by their emotions than by rules of engagement?

Snippet 3.

The protestors then started throwing stones, despite pleas from others to keep the protest non violent. And the Israelis resorted to more and more tear gas, fired from some distance forcing a general retreat of protestors back towards Bilin ending their protest.

What's missing from this is that the Palestinians were throwing "more and more" rocks before the tear gas escalated.

Snippet 4.

But in essence, in Bilin the Israeli army sprays people with filth . . .

Waghorn described this as yeast proteins just two snippets ago!

I suspect Waghorn's sour feelings have more to do with being doused by The Skunk too:

We ran with them but the overwhelming stench caught up with us. Unfortunately for Pete, our cameraman, he caught a drenching . . .

We drove back to the office. We all kept our gas masks on because of the smell, raising eyebrows at traffic lights.

Unfortunately for Waghorn, the army's bouncing blue balls -- which he witnessed in October -- probably wouldn't have broken up the protest as effectively.

Bloggers are invited to submit one ”pro-Israel” entry, whether it be a blog post, podcast, or video no older than 1 month. Then each week, I will pit submissions against each other. The winner, decided by a combination of reader votes and panel-determined score, moves to the next round, where they will submit a new entry to compete against another first round winner. The process continues until we get to two finalists competing for an Apple iPad.